04/21/2015

In an interview about the second episode of Game of Throne’s sixth season, David Benioff argues that Daenerys Targaryen is facing the difficulties that differentiate ruling from conquering. During an interview he states: “There always seem to be the sensor manifest destiny with Danny and that she was going to take was hers by fire and blood. And she has. But there's a difference between taking and keeping, and there's a difference between conquering and in ruling. And she's finding out that the latter is much more complicated.” Alas, he couldn’t be more wrong. It takes a long time for a conqueror to be a ruler and the problems that Daenerys has experienced thus far in the series are those of a conqueror, not a lawful rule.

Queen Daenerys Targaryen on the March by Rene Aiger

Daenerys isn’t a ruler, she’s still a conqueror who is subjugating a foreign people to her will. For whatever talk she may have of an impartial law in the series, the only laws that she obeys are those that she likes and she demonstrated that when she sacked Astapor, in flagrant opposition to the laws of that city.

To be a ruler, someone has to rule according to the rules of the society she finds herself in. Those laws are then what give the person legitimacy. Yet, even though Mr. Benioff speaks of Daenerys ruling, she has no legitimacy according to the laws of Meeren. She is fundamentally still a conqueror subjugating a population. The only source of legitimacy that Daenerys has is her army and a cult of personality that has surrounded her ever since she established herself as the breaker of chains. Her illegitimacy is reflected in the fact that if she were to leave Meereen, all of her work would be undone as the natural order of that city, however unfortunate it may be, would reassert itself.

Centuries of tradition that are integral to a society cannot be effectively undone by a conqueror. As the name of the region implies, slavery is an integral part to the society around Slavers’ Bay, where Astapor and Meereen are found. To destroy slavery in those nations would be to destroy their political order. Whatever one may think of slavery, a just war cannot be executed to change a fundamental part of a foreign society. Just wars have to be fought with an attainable goal. A foreign conqueror arriving in a strange land with a super-weapon cannot suddenly change the fundamental order of a society. Daenery’s motivations are tainted with hubris. However much one may despise slavery, to think that one can end it by being a foreign conqueror is can be described little more than a sin of pride and that thought cannot lead to a just and lawful war, let alone a just and lawful rule.

But let’s not fool ourselves, Daenerys isn’t a good person. She’s someone who gleefully pushed the first domino in a series of events that might burn down an entire nation. The problems that she has met with in Meereen aren’t those that would face a benevolent stateswomen. They are the problems that creep in when a conqueror places herself above the law of the country she occupies. As Cicero said, laws are truly silent among arms. And silent they are in Meereen.

Behind the glitter of girlish good intentions is someone who regards herself as a god walking the earth. Hundreds of thousands of innocent people will die because Daenerys wanted to be a savior and was willing to kill innocents to be one. That certainly isn’t virtuous statesmanship, as Edmund Burke wrote in Reflections on the Revolution in France:

I cannot conceive how any man can have brought himself to that pitch of presumption, to consider his country as nothing but carte blanche, upon which he may scribble whatever he pleases. A man full of warm speculative benevolence may wish his society otherwise constituted than he finds it; but a good patriot, and a true politician, always considers how he shall make the most of the existing materials of his country. A disposition to preserve, and an ability to improve, taken together, would be my standard of a statesman. Every thing else is vulgar in the conception, perilous in the execution.

Daenerys Targaryen is a force for evil in her world who has established a cult of personality around herself that can, really, only lead to the ruin of those who follow her. Perhaps she can be nothing else, but, contra Mr. Benioff’s assessment, of all of the problems of subjugation she is solving in Meereen, none can be deemed to be about good statesmanship. A good statesman would never have used violence to impose his will on Slavers’ Bay. By choosing to do so, Daenerys slaughtered the rule of law and now she must face the consequences, those being the consequences of a subjugator, not a lawful ruler.

I don't know what I should think about Pedro Pascal as Oberyn Martell. He just doesn't look anything like I pictured the Red Viper in the books. I look forward, though, to see if he proves my initial reactions wrong.